This is about the things I see and wonder about or in which I find humor or human grace or may seem odd enough to be worth mention...

Sunday, October 4, 2009

THE ROAD CALLED AGAIN

I have decamped. The phrase was more common in the 1880's and in England than here, but I have nonetheless.

Carlsbad is in the rear view mirror once again. The trip began before dawn since it involved driving the Los Angeles Freeways which are known to us that live south if it as the Combat Zone. Getting beyond LA to the north requires one to use their freeways and it is best to pick the day and time one wants to do so before setting out so you can have a reasonable expectation that you will be able to get through and out at the northern end of the San Fernando Valley in under five hours.

La Coachasita and I have found the any north bound travel is best started before dawn. Sunday is a good day to leave as LA people like all others are likely to get a late start that day. This weeks added attraction was the fog and 20 degree drop in temperature and and occasional drizzle as we passed through. Nothing keeps people off the LA Freeways more than a chill wind and a chilly morning. We were in Santa Barbara in three plus hours for which I was grateful , if sleep deprived.

Wind was a factor all day which is annoying when you are driving what amounts to a box faster than you wish. However, we were able to leave the main road and make several stops along the road and still reach Morro Bay by early afternoon. The wind on the beach was strong, but I had lunch there and it was in the 60's so not uncomfortable. It is , as they say "fresher" now and I will be rocked to sleep tonight. The clouds and rain had been left behind and the sun is bright and welcome. The locals are complaining that it is too cold. So far, I have found it quite refreshing. Unlike the spring trip certainly and the forecast for the northern coast is fair and perhaps a bit warmer for the rest the week.

This trip will last about a month. The driving, unlike the marathon of the spring, will be much less. Southern Oregon is the farthest I will go. The Coast will be first and then inland to visit the banks of the Rogue River, Asland, Medford, and then back south to the Redwoods National Forest. That is the plan, as you know, I am not good a keeping with plans, but one overriding desire does exist. I wan to go into the woods and sit and think and enjoy the quiet. The television seems not to work as it relies on one of those conversion boxes that no one here has had much luck with including myself. The Public Radio system in Oregon is good and the satellite radio works so long as it is not blocked by the giant trees or the cliffs along El Camino Real which will be the main route. This is the route of the famous Franciscan Missions, some, now nearly 300 years later, still operating after the Franciscan Friars led by Junipero Sierra blazed the trail to convert the "savages" to Catholicism. Others are ruins. All are interesting. We have been this way before and seen many of them on this, the first route north in California long before it was in the control of the United States. It is also now as U.S.101 and on my return I will travel through the area of California known as the "Lost Coast" since there is no road that runs along the ocean as Route 1, The Pacific Coast Highway does south of Legget. It is an odd, and in some ways an enchanted place of dirt farm roads and great trees as well as farms that run all the way to the surf. Grazing cows are sometimes seen wading in the surf there in warm weather.

So I and my faithful companion are once again off on a grand adventure. All our adventures are grand just in the fact that we manage them and get home. This will be the last of the year with only local trips hereafter. The van has a slight wound now, a glitch in the ignition system that makes the front battery drain in the night. There is a remote starter involved and it seems to be interfering with the normal starting process. It can be overcome, but I would like it to be fixed and as it happens there is a place here in Morro Bay that can look at it in the morning. If they can and it takes some time, I will still be south of San Francisco tomorrow night. That is why itineraries are rather useless. I would like to have it done, just to know something worse is not happening. It is not rocket science. Anyone with an elementary knowledge of electricity and the 12 volt system--I am not in that group--can make it stop, if not wholly repair it. I can live with either for now.

So it will be onward and northward for the next week and a slow pace, a pace this trip seems to need.

If you come along, I will try not to bore you. The places and people of interest are out there as always. I will try to find them and tell you of them.

I would like to recommend a restaurant in Capitola (near Santa Cruz): Shadowbrook. It has its own little weight-driven personal-size cable car to get from the parking lot to the restaurant down the side of the hill. Take plastic or lots of money.